Abstract Precambrian rocks are at or near the surface in only about 10 percent of the conterminous United States, but it can reasonably be inferred that they comprise the bulk of the continental crust beneath about 90 percent of the area. They are missing or unrecognized in the accreted terranes along the Pacific margin, but form significant parts of the crust in terranes accreted to the eastern continental margin during the Paleozoic. The total area of Precambrian rocks considered in this volume is comparable to that of the exposed Precambrian of the Canadian Shield. In comparison with the lateral extent of the Precambrian craton, the thickness of the continental crust is almost insignificant. The width of the craton in the northern conterminous United States is more than half the radius of the plant; the thickness of the continental crust is less than one hundredth of the planetary radius (Fig. 1). The volume of the continental crust is less than 2 percent of the volume of the mantle beneath it. Nevertheless, Precambrian rocks contain the only available record of the assembly and evolution of the fragile continental raft that we know as North America during more than five-sixths of geologic time. Of the areas of exposed Precambrian rocks in the conterminous United States, about half have been covered by modern reconnaissance geologic mapping (scale 1:250,000 or larger); less than a quarter hve been covered by detailed modern mapping (1:62,500) or larger. Perhaps 60 percent of the concealed Precambrian has been at least sketchily explored by drilling at spacings ranging from a few kilometers to a few tens of kilometers.

Abstract Precambrian rocks in the Lake Superior region underlie all or parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, an area along the southern margin of the Superior province of the Canadian Shield (Fig. 1). Except on the north, adjacent to Canada, the Precambrian rocks are overlapped by sedimentary strata of Paleozoic and Mesozoic age, which constitute a thin platform cover of relatively undisturbed rocks that thicken to the west, south, and east. Inliers of Precambrian rocks are exposed locally in southern Minnesota and Wisconsin, mainly in the flat valleys of major rivers, where erosion has cut below the Phanerozoic strata. The present landscape is subdued, and is inherited largely from Pleistocene continental glaciations, which produced a variety of erosional and depositional landforms. The glacier ice scoured the bedrock in the northern parts of the region, in much the same way as throughout most of Canada, and deposited materials of diverse lithology and provenance, as much as 200 m thick, over much of the remainder of the region. The Precambrian rocks in the region record an extended interval of crustal development and evolution that spans nearly 3 b.y. of earth history. This interval of geologic time is not continuously recorded in layered and intrusive units, but instead is punctuated by specific rock-forming and tectonic events that can be deduced from geologic relations and placed in a chronometric framework by isotopic dating. (Fig. 2, also see correlation chart for Precambrian rocks of the Lake Superior region, Morey and Van Schmus, 1986; and Bergstrom and Morey, 1985.)

Abstract The Wyoming province is the region in Wyoming and adjacent states underlain by rocks of Archean age (Plate 2). It is an Archean craton bordered on the east and south by younger Precambrian provinces (Plate 1). Precambrian rocks are only exposed in the cores of the Laramide (Late Cretaceous to Early Tertiary) uplifts, and outcrops constitute less than 10 percent of the area underlain by Archean basement. Between uplifts, basement rocks are covered by thick Phanerozoic strata, so that extrapolations of geology from uplift to uplift are generally tenuous. Reconstructing the Archean history of the Wyoming province is further complicated by deformation associated with the late Mesozoic fold and thrust belt along the western margin. Although the Archean record is fragmentary, the basement uplifts generally afford excellent exposure. The northern and northwestern margins of the Wyoming province are poorly constrained. Archean rocks are known as far north as the Little Rocky Mountains of Montana (Peterman, 1981). According to King (1976), Archean and Early Proterozoic dates are intermingled at the northwest margin of the province in a wide zone that exhibits a gradational change from Archean dates in central Montana to Early Proterozoic dates to the northwest, reflecting increasing influence of post-Archean thermal events. The southwestern and southern margins of the Wyoming province are also poorly constrained. Archean rocks have been reported from several ranges in the Cordilleran orogenic belt, such as the Albion and Raft River Ranges (Armstrong and Hills, 1967) and possibly the Ruby Mountains of Nevada (A. W. Snoke, personal communication, 1986).

Abstract Research on the Precambrian basement of North America over the past two decades has shown that Archean and earliest Proterozoic evolution culminated in suturing of Archean cratonic elements and pre-1.80-Ga Proterozoic terranes to form the Canadian Shield at about 1.80 Ga (Hoffman, 1988,1989a, b). We will refer to this part of Laurentia as the Hudsonian craton (Fig. 1) because it was fused together about 1.80 to 1.85 Ga during the Trans-Hudson and Penokean orogenies (Hoffman, 1988). The Hudsonian craton, including its extensions into the United States (Chapters 2 and 3, this volume), formed the foreland against which 1.8- to 1.6-Ga continental growth occurred, forming the larger Laurentia (Hoffman, 1989a, b). Geologic and geochronologic studies over the past three decades have shown that most of the Precambrian in the United States south of the Hudsonian craton and west of the Grenville province (Chapter 5) consists of a broad northeast to east-northeast-trending zone of orogenic provinces that formed between 1.8 and 1.6 Ga. This zone, including extensions into eastern Canada, comprises or hosts most rock units of this age in North America as well as extensive suites of 1.35- to 1.50-Ga granite and rhyolite. This addition to the Hudsonian Craton is referred to in this chapter as the Transcontinental Proterozoic provinces (Fig. 1); the plural form is used to denote the composite nature of this broad region. The Transcontinental Proterozoic provinces consist of many distinct lithotectonic entities that can be defined on the basis of regional lithology, regional structure, U-Pb ages from zircons, Sr-Nd-Pb isotopic signatures, and regional geophysical anomalies.

Abstract This chapter describes the Grenville orogen as it is preserved in areas of outcrop as well as in the subsurface in the United States, Late Proterozoic continental rifting that fragmented that orogen, and Precambrian rocks within terranes accreted to the rifted eastern and southern margins of Laurentia (earliest Paleozoic North America). The accretion of terranes to the eastern and southern margins of Laurentia formed the Paleozoic Appalachian (Caledonide)-Ouachita orogen. Outliers of the Grenville orogen, variously deformed by Paleozoic orogenies, crop out within the western part of the Appalachian orogen. Although protoliths as old as Archean have been identified along the northwestern margin of the Grenville orogen in Canada, as far as we know, no rocks in the areas covered by this chapter are older than Middle Proterozoic. Some rocks, however, indicate ties to older source areas. Quartzites from the Adirondack Lowlands contain detrital zircons with minimum ages of 1.65 Ga, 1.8 Ga, and 1.95 Ga (McLelland and others, 1988a). Recent work by Dunning and Cousineau (1990) and Olszewski and others (1990) on rocks of the Chain Lakes block, Maine-Quebec, and correlatives to the north in the Canadian Appalachians has shown that some zircons, possibly detrital, in diamic-tite are as old as 2.8 Ga. Sinha and Bartholomew (1984) report a discordia intercept of 1.87 ± 0.2 Ga for zircons, probably detrital, from layered gneiss of the Blue Ridge Grenvillian outlier in Virginia. Zartman and Hermes (1987) report a Late Archean inheritance in zircon from Permian granites in the southeastern New England Avalonian terrane; they attribute this to the under-plating of the Avalonian microplate by Archean crustal components, possibly of Africa, in the late Paleozoic during the collision of Gondwanaland with Avalonia.

Abstract The distribution of Middle and Late Proterozoic sedimentary and metasedimentary cover that lies unconformably on Early Proterozoic and Archean crystalline basement has been known for decades, but recent work, employing techniques of paleomagnetic correlation, sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy, and analysis of tectonic subsidence has led to modifications of some long-accepted correlations and tectonic models. Within the context of both older classical studies and this new work, the stratigraphy, correlation, tectonic setting, fossil content, and mineral potential of Middle and Late Proterozoic rocks of parts of the Rocky Mountain, Colorado Plateau, and Basin and Range provinces of the United States are discussed. A problem common to interpretation of all Proterozoic strata is a widespread lack of fossil control on age and paleoecology, which makes correlations inherently uncertain and interpretation of depositional environments more difficult. We present current hypotheses about these topics and stress the uncertainty of some of our conclusions. The apparent polar wander path for the North American craton, as derived from the Middle and Late Proterozoic sedimentary cover, is central to our modifications of stratigraphie correlation, especially of Middle Proterozoic rocks. The reader is asked to view the work and summaries presented here in the light of ongoing scientific debate about strata that are chronically stubborn in yielding information. The authors of sections of this chapter include both those who have performed classical studies, which are the foundation of our present understanding, and younger geologists who have been busy refining and modifying early interpretations, using different methods of study. The treatment in this chapter is therefore variable depending on which generation of investigators is speaking.

Abstract The preceding chapters, which deal with myriad facets of the Precambrian geology of the conterminous United States, necessarily emphasize local descriptions and details. In this chapter we consider some broader regional and global relations. Hamilton discusses some of the difficulties with conventional views of the early evolution of the crust, and speculates that the geology of Venus, as elucidated by the new Magellan imagery, may provide a model for terrestrial Archean tectonics. Farmer and Ball describe the Nd-Sm isotopic system and discuss the applications of Nd-Sm studies to the determination of model crustal ages and delineation of major crustal provinces. Finally, we summarize the development of the southern part of Laurentia, the Late Proterozoic to early Paleozoic supercontinent that was fragmented during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic to produce the North American craton. Geologic processes have changed greatly as the Earth has progressively lost heat, and plate-tectonic models that work well for the Phanerozoic (where my own expertise mostly lies) become progressively less applicable to successively older Precambrian assemblages. These models nevertheless can be fitted with reasonable success to Proterozoic geology, as Hoffman has been the leader in demonstrating; his 1989a paper provided excellent syntheses of the geology and tectonic significance of the Proterozoic tracts of Canada and the United States in such terms. Accretionary wedges, ophiolites, fore-arc and back-arc basins, oceanic and continental magmatic arcs, and rifted-margin sedimentary wedges are all recognizable in Proterozoic assemblages although different in important ways from modern ones. Archean rock and tectonic assemblages are markedly less yet like modern ones. Although an increasing consensus (as, Hoffman, 1989a; until recently, I concurred) holds that Archean geologic processes also were dominated by plate tectonics, major features now appear to me inexplicable in such terms.

Abstract This wide-ranging discussion of Precambrian rocks includes contributions from a diverse array of authors actively engaged in investigations of various aspects of U.S. Precambrian geology. Summary discussions by the editors of the five major chapters place these contributions in a logical regional framework. A concluding chapter explores Archean crustal processes from the point of view of lunar and planetary analogies, discusses the significance of Sm crustal provinces, and provides an overview of the development of the southern parts of Laurentia. Accompanying plates include a newly compiled map of the Precambrian rocks of the conterminous U.S., maps showing relationships of the Precambrian geology to magnetic anomalies and to isostatic residual gravity, and a new correlation chart for U.S. Precambrian rocks.

The Colorado Proterozoic province is separated from Archean rocks of the Wyoming province by a major structural boundary, the Cheyenne belt. Proterozoic rocks south of the Cheyenne belt are exposed in the Sierra Madre, Medicine Bow Mountains, and Laramie Range of southern Wyoming. They consist of metavolcanic units, metagraywacke, pelitic schist and gneiss, amphibolite, and felsic to mafic intrusive rocks that locally resemble rocks of central Colorado. North of the Cheyenne belt, Archean granite and gneiss of the Wyoming craton are overlain by a Late Archean and Early Proterozoic supracrustal sequence that contains quartzite, metadolomite, phyllite, and subordinate metavolcanic rocks. The eugeoclinal character of the metamorphic rocks south of the Cheyenne belt contrasts sharply with the dominantly siliciclastic supracrustal rocks north of the Cheyenne belt. Although specific sequences south of the belt have not yet been correlated between the Sierra Madre, Medicine Bow Mountains, and Laramie Range, similarities in age, lithology, and major element chemistry suggest that they are part of a single geologic terrane. Macroscopic structure and microscopic kinematic indicators within the Cheyenne belt suggest that accretion of the Proterozoic rocks of northern Colorado to the Archean Wyoming craton was accomplished primarily by large-scale thrusting. Following accretion of individual thrust blocks, the boundary zone was steepened by folding and reactivated locally during a period of strike-slip movement. Presence of similar lithologies and shear zones south of the Cheyenne belt suggests that the southern margin of the Wyoming craton may have been a long-lived zone of crustal accretion.